


Beach Sequence

by MissEllaVation



Category: U2
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-05-08 06:48:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14688720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissEllaVation/pseuds/MissEllaVation
Summary: Time shoots on by (when you’re doing stuff to your best mate in a sand dune.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I keep going back to these little “first time” thingies. They almost always take place in 1990, but there just keep being more of them. How can that be, you ask? Well, why not? Why not cram zillions of unbelievable events into just a few short months? If you follow the news, you know it’s totally possible!
> 
> So I just kind of woke up one day with the image of B and E cuddling up in the dunes on a chilly beach, and I had to go with it. The challenge was finding the right beach. I wanted the guys to be at home, but Dublin’s beaches tend to be rocky, narrow, surrounded by public transportation, or just close to city life in general. Then I discovered Bull Island, which juts out of Northside suburban Dublin. Sandy beaches! Dunes! The potential for privacy, maybe, if it’s not the height of summer.
> 
> This was going to be Edge POV, but then I decided it would be more fun for me to write it from Bono’s perspective. I even switched their positions in the sand dune, which changed the dynamic quite a bit. Unhinged Edge Worship™! 
> 
> Spoiler: This fic is remarkably silly. There are serious bits, but there is also some slapstick. I guess. Something like that.
> 
> Apologies to our wonderful online friend beachsequence, by the way, who is in NO WAY involved with this shameful undertaking. And of course the song/art project called "Beach Sequence" didn’t exist until 1995, but life is imperfect, SORRY.
> 
> A million thanks to the magnificent likeamadonna, for aiding and abetting me. <3

Spring is taking a while to come to Dublin. There’s a distinct bite in the air despite the afternoon sun and the almost cloudless sky. I’ve managed somehow to pry you out of your luxurious hovel, and now I’m driving you across the bridge to Bull Island. The sun glinting on the water feels like a blessing after the long colorless winter. I’m singing along with Soul II Soul, trying to mimic all the vocal parts, plus the violins. You’re clutching the door handle for dear life. I guess I can’t really blame you. Your bandana, sunglasses, and pout evoke a disconsolate Fellini ingenue. Your beard spoils the effect only slightly.

On either side of the Causeway Road there are rolling meadows full of plants that thrive in thin, sandy ground, tough grasses and low thickets of evergreen. While I won’t say this aloud, these meadows always remind me of the way hair grows on skin—in one sort of pattern on an arm, in a different pattern on a belly.

I ignore your little sigh of relief as I park the car in a byway at the head of the beach trail. The whole island feels deserted, though I know better than to believe that. Somewhere there must be people walking, jogging, exercising their dogs, but right now all I can hear are seabirds and the rhythm of the ocean. The inhale-and-exhale of the tides is a sound I’ll never be tired of. Do people who live inland even know that the earth breathes?

“I wish I’d brought a jacket.” You stand outside the car with your arms wrapped around yourself. “What do we plan to do here, exactly?”

“Ah, sorry Edge. If I had a jacket I’d lend it to you.” You’ve been looking a little downcast lately. Ali’s words, not mine. “We’re here because it’s a beautiful day, and because the missus said I should keep you occupied.”

“More like she wanted to get you out of the house.”

“Yeah. Well, I do spend far too much time at home.”

“What? We’ve barely been home at all for almost three—oh, I see now. Humor.”

“That was a bit scary, The Edge. Try to keep up, man.”

“Anyway, it’s not really a beach day. “

“No, but it’s sunny. You’ll warm up if we walk.” This is the kind of thing you might say to a child when you know you’ve been neglectful. I feel like an arse. “Anyway, at least it’s quiet, and maybe being out in nature will get our creative juices flowing.”

“I hate that expression.”

“So do I. But we’re here, so let’s go.”

We set out on the sandy footpath that leads to the dunes, and from the dunes to the strand. We don’t talk, but our strides quickly become synchronized. So does our breathing. I love how that happens. I love this about us. I glance at you to see if you’ve noticed, but you’re focused, in a very Edge-y way, on the horizon. 

The dunes grow higher on either side of us, the path narrows, and a boy and a girl pop out of nowhere. Well, obviously they must have popped out of _somewhere_. We just didn’t see them until they were right in front of us.

“Oh my Jaysis,” the girl screams, “what are you doing here?” As if she knows us. Fair enough, I guess. At this point, _everyone_  knows us.

They’re younger than we are. Lots of people are younger, suddenly. I take in their sandy feet, the seed pods clinging to their jeans. The boy is holding a rolled-up blanket and a cooler. Both are holding their shoes.

“Just taking a bit of the air, my dear.” I shake her gritty little hand. “Plucking the golden apples of the sun.”

The girl titters. (Titter is such a fabulous word, isn’t it? And it describes perfectly both her laugh and her general demeanor.) You shake her hand too. Then we both shake hands with her boyfriend, who tries to cover the fact that he is starstruck with an extremely firm grip and much manly nodding. Then they’re off, the girl still tittering.

“Your man was a bit grumpy.”

“Yeah. I think he was on the verge of collecting our tax, Edge.”

You reward me for this with a big grin, first one of the day, and I feel as warm, suddenly, as if I really had eaten the sun’s golden apples.

We continue on our way through the dunes, through the brightness of the day and the almost uncomfortably cold wind. Your smile has disappeared again, and I’m just about to say _fuck this, let’s go for a pint_ , when I see that someone—an ambitious family armed with dozens of little plastic shovels, or maybe that couple we just passed?—has dug a deep depression in the side of the dune. Almost like a private little cave, with a bit of an overhang. It must have taken hours of effort, and I am of course compelled to lower myself into this fine example of human ingenuity.

“Ah, this is really cool!”

“Any wet spots?”

“Edge.”

“Any contraband?”

“Unfortunately not. But this is a nice vantage point for looking out at the beach and the sea. It's sheltered.” I squirm around till I get comfortable, and beckon you to join me.

You don’t move. I’m stuck sitting there, eye-level with your jackknife knees.

“Why do you have to use the entire planet as a prop, Bono?”

“Get your arse in here. They’ve warmed it up for us.”

“I’ll bet.”

“No really. You know, the sand retains the heat of the day.”

“Does it, Mr. Science?”

“Ah, so nice and comfy. Might have myself a little nap.” I tug at your ankle until you have no choice but to either kick me in the face or crash-land beside me in the little hollow. You choose the kinder option, and I thank you.

“Dammit, Bono.”

“Well, I do need to test the veracity of the warm sand theory. You can be my control.”

“Breaking my leg in the process.”

“Your leg is demonstrably whole and unbroken.”

“We can’t really both fit in here.” You keep squirming around, trying to get comfortable. Like a dog turning circles. I want to pet your head and your ears.

“Look, just sit a little bit in front of me.” I manage somehow to place you between my legs, facing away. Oh dear. I suppose I meant to do this all along; it feels quite nice. “Here, have a drink.”

“Oh. What’s in the flask?”

“Hot tea and sugar.”

“You’re joking.”

“I am not.”

“So you’re a teetotaler now. You’ve taken the cure.”

“Would you ever fuck off? No, I just didn’t want to drink today.” Because I’ve been worried about you and I want to stay alert, and not be too obnoxious. “Have some.”

“Okay.” You take the flask from my hand, uncap it, and drink. “Ah, smooth. Not Lyon’s, is it?”

“No! Barry’s.”

“But of course. I’m told it’s a very good year for Barry’s.”

The wind blows. The ocean respires. The seabirds wheel and swoop above us in beautiful black-and-silver arcs.

“What are those birds called, The Edge?”

I can only tell you’re squinting from the way the lower half of your face bunches up. You point. “Well, that one’s called Eammon, and that one over there, that’s Sandra.”

“You’re such a wanker.”

“Thanks. You know, it is kind of nice here.” You squirm. “A little tight though.”

“Edge, we’ve been through hell and high water together. Don’t get shy on me now.”

You lean back so that you can almost look at me. The corner of your mouth quirks up. One leafy-green eye recalling (I hope) the triumphant nights, the drunken revels, the shared rooms. Also the increasingly intense and lingering hugs, and the stolen kisses. Your being squashed up against me in a little hollow at the beach should not be controversial at this point.

And yet.

“Oh, just lean on me, Edge. There. Be warm, be comfortable.”

“Okay.”

You’ve got your bandana pulled low over your eyebrows. You’re overly concerned with your hairline, but the rest of your hair is long, unruly, and blowing sideways across my face. It smells of the expensive organic shampoo you like, and just faintly of cigarette smoke. It smells like _you_. It’s good, Edge. It’s lovely. You’ve got a bit of a heavy metal pirate style going these days, which is hilarious, considering the band you happen to play for. But your face has a purity that keeps me tethered to the earth when I feel like I could fly off into space and be lost. I don’t know what I’d do if I ever looked to my right and didn’t see you there. I want you to be happy.

“Oh, I forgot! I’ve got a Flake bar!” I pat my pockets, looking for it. Shirt pocket of course. Thankfully. Had it been in my jeans pocket it would have been fairly disgusting by now.

“Who eats Flakes by themselves, without an ice cream? What kind of barbarian?”

“You’re such a purist.” I put the chocolate under your nose. “Just eat the Flake, Edge.”

“I want ice cream.”

“Edge.”

“Oh, Okay.” You break the bar in half inside the wrapper. “Share it with me.”

“If you insist. Ahh—a bar of chocolate, a flask of tea, and thou.”

There, finally, is your big laugh. I want to hear more. It's not really like you to be so serious. I want more of your laughter.

*

Having placed you between my legs has left me with a bit of a dilemma. Just a bit. I suppose I could say, _hey, this was fun but why don’t we get up now and walk along the water?_ Or, _hey, nice day at the beach but I could really use a pint now._ And we would both scramble around and bump our heads on the overhanging bit of dune, and laugh, and move on.

But the truth is that I’d rather stay put, dilemma be damned. In fact, I’d like to try and get you even closer to me—closer to my dilemma. You feel so insubstantial today. My bird-boned boy. There are not enough Flake bars in this world to fatten you up.

I pretend that your blowing hair is annoying me so I have an excuse to scoop it up and put it over your shoulder. It won’t stay in place, of course, but now that my hand is there, I might as well give your shoulder a good, affectionate rub. And rub your other shoulder too, for symmetry.

The truth is I love touching you, feeling the slight resistance of the hard muscles under your skin. I’ve almost forgotten why this should be considered a problem.

You’re not complaining, but you’re not quite compliant either. I have to wonder what you’re thinking. As for me, I’m remembering all the times we almost forgot ourselves. I’ve put them in an imaginary album I call _Bono and Edge’s Greatest Near Misses, 1977 – 1990._ The early near misses are made of sweaty tee shirts and ink-stained jeans, and taste of the red lemonade on your tongue. The more recent ones are darker and dizzier. They smell of spilled whiskey. There’s the flash of a stage light on a snakeskin boot, your hand tugging playfully at a ribbon tied around my neck, the two of us pretending to dance while I grab at your hips and try to pull you closer, closer.

The knots in your shoulders are loosening now, and my mouth is very close to the side of your neck.

“Edge.”

You finally relax, you let your back rest against my chest. “I can feel your heartbeat, Bono.”

“Well, thank goodness for that.”

Your body is so familiar to me that I feel quite protective of it. I still can't help but  think of you as a gangly boy, all lost behind your Explorer. But you've grown up seamless and elegant. You've got your wrist draped casually over your bent knee, your slim hand dangles. As the man said, _if I were a sculptor…_ But I’m preoccupied with the spot between your earlobe and the hinge of your jaw. I want so much to kiss that beautiful, sharp, tender angle. You know, I’m going to. Just softly, with my closed lips.

There.

An almost inaudible sound comes from your throat. It doesn't sound like a protest.

I have to move just a bit closer to you. My dilemma—that horned beastie—insists I do this. I place one hand lightly where your belly would be if you had any spare flesh at all, while the other continues to rove over your shoulder, your neck, and then lower, till my fingers stop of their own accord at your open collar. Waiting.

You don’t push my hands away. In fact, you don't move at all. But you still don’t say a word. I’m starting to wonder what other liberties you might let me take as long as we don’t speak of them. Maybe you just miss being touched. Maybe it doesn’t matter to you who’s touching you.

“Edge.”

You don’t answer. You just turn your head a fraction of an inch to the right. A tendon in your neck surfaces, recedes. Your cheek and your chin, even with your light beard, are so sharp and vivid against the blue sky that they look die-cut. Jesus, let's just face it. I’m in love with you. I’m in love with you, Edge. Was I ever not? I think I always was.

“Edge.”

You turn your head just a bit more. You’re waiting for me to say something. Probably something like, _let’s go for a takeaway._ I don’t know.

What was I thinking, making you sit between my legs like this. It seemed like a fine idea at the time, but now it feels like the start of something I’m not sure how to finish.

I suppose, if you were a woman, I would stroke your hair softly, like this. I would comb through it with my fingers, like this. I would kiss your cheek. Like this. I would kiss your ear. Like this. I would expect—hope—to hear you making small, breathy sounds. But you’re not. Not quite. It’s only when I apply my teeth to that beautiful phantom tendon in your neck that you break your silence with a low moan, deeply resonant and entirely male.

…only now I _do_ hear some heavy breathing, and it's coming from the direction of my foot. What the fuck. Some demon has the toe of my boot clenched in its tiny, toothy jaws.

“Oh shit, Bono, we’ve got company.”

We do indeed, in the form of a small, fluffy black dog, snorting happily about our feet and wagging its tiny little tail like mad. Before long, it’s got its claws hooked into the fabric of my jeans, and is trying to scale my leg.

“Get off, you mongrel!” My voice is a bit more hysterical than I would like. You’ve sprung away from me. You sit on your heels, laughing like a madman.

“Percy! Percy, leave those poor girls—oh wait, those boys—those _people_ alone!”

Two older women approach our former  fortress of solitude and peer in. Both sensibly kitted out and a little winded, I suppose from chasing the dog. One is holding the tiny plaid collar and leash from which Percy has evidently escaped.

“Percy, you naughty thing. Come here at once!” Percy detaches himself rather sadly from my leg and trots over to her, his little paws pap-papping in the sand. "I'm  _so_ sorry, boys."

"It's nothing," you say.

Both ladies are staring at us. Both of them narrow their eyes at the same moment. 

“Hello, you look familiar,” says the one who hasn’t scolded the dog.

You are sitting ramrod straight now, making a show of looking at the sky, at your foot, at your watch. It falls to me to smile shyly and say, “Well, I suppose we might.”

“Oh, Maggie,” cries the dogless one. “It’s them! From the pop group. You know.”

Maggie is now holding the squirming, diabolical dog in her arms. “Oh, of course!” she says, and makes it wave its little paw at us.

We both wave weakly back. "Hi, Percy," you add.

“Why are you all squoze into this tiny space, dears?”

“Well, we were just—”

“Cold.” You fold your arms across your chest and mime shivering, adorably.

“Yes. And we were—”

“We find sometimes that being out in nature helps us to write.”

“Oh, you’re writing.” The dogless one looks confused, seeing no sign of paper or pen.

“ _Composing_ , Fiona,” says Maggie.

“Yeah, we’re trying to work up something kind of different for our next album, so—” I let my words trail off. Something about Fiona and Maggie, the way they lean toward one another, the companionability of their movements, leads me to believe that they have our number, completely.

“Well don’t let us distract you. Enjoy the sunshine while it lasts!” Maggie waves Percy’s paw at us again, and then we are alone once more.

“Jaysis Unholy Christ. We’re gonna be all over the papers tomorrow.”

“No, Edge. Those old dears?” I decide to keep my instincts about them to myself.

“They weren’t _that_ old.” You grab a handful of sand, let it sift through your fingers. “We do have to be careful, Bono.”

“Well." My heart sinks a bit. "Do you want to leave?”

“Not really.” A grin and one second of precious eye contact. “I think I’d like you to keep doing what you were doing.”

“Which was?”

“Something involving my neck.”

“Well! Get over here, then.” I whistle, pat my leg. "Here, boy!"

*

The sense of danger seems to have unleashed something in you. You scoot back into the hollow, right back to where you were—between my legs. You offer me your beautiful, still-boyish neck. And this time, you reach up and grasp the back of my head, bury your fingers in my hair, press my mouth closer to your flesh, as if you are the willing victim of a vampire. Your skin is cool, smooth. The word that comes to me is _moonstone._ You arch your back. You are just so beautifully formed, like a modern, ultra-light suspension bridge. When I finally, fearfully, allow my hand to stray down between your legs I can’t quite believe how hard you are.

Of course I’m ready to apologize at a moment's notice. I’m ready for you to haul off and pop me one in the jaw. (There is historical precedent for this possibility.) I’m _not_ quite ready for what you really do, which is to take my hand in a vise-like grip and move it more efficiently into place, while your other hand fumbles at the buttons of your button-fly jeans.

Okay. _Please,_ I pray. _No more ladies with dogs today._

You want this. You want this. Your silence still scares me a bit but oh, there you are, beautifully silken and hard.

You’ve taken control of the situation so completely that I’m shocked into silence myself. But you can’t really see my face. This worries me. My hand could belong to anyone. You could be thinking about anyone at all.

But then you say my name. My name, so soft, and so lost-sounding that you might be saying it in your sleep.

I press my lips to your ear again. I say words. I don’t even know what they are. This semi-public encounter in the dunes isn’t good enough for you. Maybe if we were still kids, but not now. For you and I have dwelt in the most luxuriously well-appointed rooms, and we should be in one now. How have I let this happen, Edge? How is it that I’m groping you in secret on a hometown beach? I’ll make this up to you later. I would do anything for you. Anything. “Anything, Edge.”

I don’t even know if you can even hear me. The gulls scream, the sea breathes in, breathes out.

You keep your hand firmly on top of mine, guiding me, adjusting. I'm hypnotized, my chin on your shoulder, watching our hands move together. You’re warm now, faintly flushed as if a light-fingered painter had applied a rose tint to your cheek and neck. Your narrow cowboy hips are moving, moving. Your quickening breath has a delicacy I’m afraid I could never match if this situation were reversed. But your hand on mine is strong as steel. Your cock is steely hard too. And yet soft. The most beautiful delicately stretched skin. I’ve always known you were some kind of angel.

Ah, I can feel you, you’re almost there, you’re coming. A thrust, a silvery little cry almost lost in the cacophony of seabirds, then a louder, deeper one, and you flow over my fingers, warm, hot, and I try to contain it, you, in my clumsy hand. And then we’re just there, here, bits of the dune collapsing and sliding down behind my back and into my shirt, your chest heaving, your hand still wrapped around mine, holding me in place. Your head lolling on my shoulder.

I’m trying to kiss you in any spot I can reach.  _Please say my name again so I know you know it was me, please._

You do. You say it, soft and low. I’m so surprised by you that my own dilemma has receded to mere background noise, and only now do I realize that I have nothing—no handkerchief or napkin or old sock—even the Flake wrapper has blown away. I’ve only got the clothes on my back in which I must go home to my wife and child. I could brush my hand in the dune grass but that would be such an awful, dismissive gesture. This is you, after all. If we were anywhere else, if we were in a room, in a bed, on a floor, I would roll around in your come, let it soak into my skin, I would taste it.

_I would. Anything, Edge._

After a while you say, “Give me your hand.” Which is slightly redundant as my hand is still curled around you, and your hand is still wrapped around mine, and I’m beginning to feel like we might stay this way forever, and that might be just what I want. But you uncurl my hand gently and lift it toward your own mouth.

My God, really?

And you take my thumb, and then my forefinger, and then my second finger into your mouth. You kiss my palm. You are tasting yourself on my hand, and this is the goddamned sexiest, most intimate thing I have ever been part of—and I have to wonder exactly what sort of thoughts you’ve been hiding all this time, and what else you would do, and what I would do—

“Jesus Edge. I’ll marry you someday.”

You twist all the way around and fix me with the kind of look I never dreamed (but always half-hoped) you would aim at me. A complex mixture of amusement, gentleness, affection. Love, maybe. “I think we’re already married, in a way. Aren’t we?”

“Maybe so.”

“Kiss me.”

We’ve kissed many times but this is still a first, in a way, a no-holds-barred full bodied kiss with your exquisite fingers holding my jaw, hard and tender, your lips and your tongue. The taste of you, and the other taste of you. Why did we wait? It was you who stopped us, I think. Or was it me? It was us. Sad little conversations in hotel rooms, alleys, other people’s gardens. You being sensible, me making ironic jokes as if it didn’t really matter anyway. Maybe we knew we weren’t ready for whatever this is, which feels fated, predestined. God. I need you. We have to get out of here. I need to feel your weight, light as you are, top to toe. I need your hands on my body. I am made entirely of need.

The wind kicks up and our clothes are full of sand. Somewhere below us on the beach a radio is playing. Can’t make out a melody, only drum machines, pure rhythm, the kind of thing we can’t help but stop and notice lately. We look at each other. You look like you’ve won something. You look like you think you own me. You might be right.

“Edge.”

“So can we acknowledge this now?”

There’s something familiar about this question. One of us has said it before. I think it was me. Yes, it was me. In the city somewhere, five years ago. We were drunk and kissing and I wanted you. I wanted you to fuck me and I wasn’t even sure, then, how that could work. 

“Yes, we can acknowledge this, The Edge.”

“It’ll be dark soon. How far away is the car?”

“Not far.”

“Let’s go.”

“But—”

The music shuts off abruptly. We can hear a dog barking. Possibly Percy.

“It’s cold out here. Take me home, Maggie.” You smile, waiting for my brain to catch up with yours. “I want to acknowledge you someplace where it’s warm. And not so fucking sandy.”

“Well. I'm all yours then, Fiona. Let's go."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NOTE: You're not hallucinating; I've changed my user-name. But it's still moi, PJ!
> 
> Well, this was supposed to be a one-shot, but it sort of demanded more? If I were still in grad school I'd worry about how different in tone this chapter is from the first one. ("How is this even the same narrator? I think you need to go back and work on it some more.") And I'd never get away with all that florid language that happens toward the end. But I think for our purposes here, it's acceptable.
> 
> Also, my goodness, Bono is a bit passive here. Okay, passive's not a good word. I don't know. I don't know, you guys. I just seem to like the idea that this is the one situation where he can just give up control to someone else. And of course that someone would be Edge.
> 
> Maybe it's too much. I just don't know. 
> 
> #BestSummaryEver
> 
> Anyway, here's what happened after they left the beach.

Someone asked me if I remembered your childhood bedroom, and I said no. I told him about Adam’s room instead, because it was the coolest room of all—a teen paradise with dayglo posters and black light, and big cushions on the floor. Four stereo speakers, one in each corner! We were all so awed by that. 

But I do remember your room, Edge. Of course I do. I just remember it for different reasons. It wasn’t cool at all. It was safe. (And I guess I want to keep it that way.) Still a boy’s room, with a couple of model planes you’d assembled from kits and painted meticulously. You’d sellotaped a few rock’n’roll posters onto the pale green wallpaper, but even so the room felt like a little nest, and you the precious egg inside. Neat as a pin on the surface, but all kinds of rubbish stuffed into drawers and under the bed. Comic books, drawings, toys you didn’t care about anymore but couldn’t bear to throw away. The heart of a child—that was your room. Because even though you were as grumpy and obnoxious and filthy-minded as anyone else that age, underneath it all you were still that child. You and I would lie on the floor listening to records in the late afternoon, and we’d get lost in our own thoughts for a while. Then I would look up from my study of the carpet, and see you watching me across the shadows and sunbeams. The incredible purity of your expression, the true spirit of the boy revealed.

I think that’s what I’m looking for as I park the car in your driveway in the dusk. This new, momentous thing has happened between us—I mean, this thing I’ve done, because it was me, after all, I was the instigator—but are you still there? Are you still The Edge?

You take my hand from where it’s clamped to the steering wheel, gently pry it loose, bring it to your lips. You kiss my palm (again.) My fingertips touch the cool crescent of your cheek. Your eyes, my God. It’s you. You’re there. 

“B, you have to come into the house. You can’t just go home.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I want to.”

“Yeah?”

“You know this.”

I do. But do I really?

You have to forgive me Edge, because over the last ten years I’ve grown used to a lot of attention. Mostly from girls, but not always. In any case, I don’t trust it because I know it isn’t really me they want. It’s the character I play: that righteous holy man I can be on stage, spinning around, hectoring, falling to my knees. Also the relentless flirt who’ll seduce you into a frenzy later that night, before going home to my wife. Which somehow makes you like me even more. I am that guy, but I’m also not him at all. Sometimes I see my face in the mirror and I think, what could possibly be there for anyone to fall in love with? If these people knew the real me, they might not want the trouble. I mean, if they knew how much I needed them all, even the ones up at the very top of the stadium, because of how empty and unloved I feel sometimes, and if I ever let them see that—

You give me a gentle shake. “Bono. Come on inside.”

It’s truly cold out now; spring isn’t even half-trying. But your house is warm, and I follow you as you flip on light switches and kick a little shamefacedly at the jumble of shoes in the hallway. As if I’ve never been here before. As if I would care that you haven’t cleaned up. I add my own sandy shoes to the pile.

“Edge.”

You look at me at first with your usual expression, the accepting smile of the friend who knows me through and through. But your face shifts rapidly from warmth, to surprise, to dark-eyed hunger. 

I find myself running at you. You catch me in your arms. You don’t even stumble. “Let me stay with you.” I’m begging, as if I’m the one whose life has been turned upside-down, as if I’m the one who’s been left alone.

“Anything, B.”

You’ve got your arm around me, holding me against your hard little chest. One hand tangling itself in my hair. I’m just clinging to your neck. This feels like... I don’t know. There is no word. I’ve touched you. I’ve seen you. We’ve stepped across something, an invisible border that was holding us apart.

“Edge, I’m sorry.”

“No. It was alright. I always wanted—I don’t even know how to say it. You know.” 

I’ve been hiding my face in your neck but now I look up, and you kiss me with your hand still tangled in my hair. I’m right where you want me, I think. I hope. You kiss me softly, then harder. I can feel myself opening, not just my mouth—everything—it’s so strange, Edge. Familiar but strange. Our legs twist around each other. Our mouths taste of the cold, salty air we’ve been breathing, and you keep kissing me, you’re relentless, holding me tighter and tighter.

You’ve taken the pressure off me. I’m not in charge, I’m not in charge of this situation. And it’s a relief, such a relief, to feel out of control. No, I mean, to feel everything is happening to me, to feel your hands on me. To feel you steer me through your house, you pressing forward, me taking backward steps, not even sure of what’s behind me. I wonder what it’s like to be your woman. Are you always like this? No wonder you had your kids so fast.

“Bono.”

“Edge.”

“You okay?”

“Of course.”

A subtle change of light and air, and we’re in your bedroom. I can smell clean laundry, and the good, organic-shampoo smell of you, lemons and spices. Your face is touched here and there with light. (How beautiful you are!) I’ve been all over the world with you, but I’ve never, as an adult, been in your own bedroom.

It’s not like 1976 in your old house. Instead it’s all subtle color and texture, a mellow wood floor under a Persian rug. Where’s your poster of Marc Bolan? You used to tell me I’d look good in the top hat he was wearing, because I could mimic his arrogant pout. But I never thought I was pretty enough. No Marc, no Bowie, not me. Not pretty enough for glam rock.

“You’re gorgeous.”

As if you’ve been reading my mind. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“I’d like to hear it again.”

You step back, just a tiny bit, and take my face between your hands. “You’re gorgeous. I’ve always… when we were kids and I used to follow you around…I guess I didn’t really know why.”

“You followed me around, Edge?”

“Didn’t I?”

“It didn’t feel that way.”

“Felt that way to me.” You stroke my face with your fingertips. “I would have followed you anywhere. And I did, obviously.”

“Edge. I thought we were a team.”

“We are.”

“Like Fiona and…”

“Maggie.”

“Yes. Like Fiona and Maggie.” 

“Come to bed now, Maggie.” 

And of course I do what you say, though I try to make a joke out of it, flinging myself like a child onto your warm unmade bed with the linen sheets and the blankets in a tangle. The springs creak just a little as you stretch out beside me, wrapping me in the scent of your hair, the smell of the sea on your shirt and your skin. My pirate, in your pirate scarf and hoop earring. I’m unnerved enough to keep babbling.

“Fiona, have you walked Percy?”

“No. Fuck Percy. I hate him. He can walk himself.”

You start kissing me again while I’m still laughing. You roll me onto my back. Slight as you are, you’ve got me pinned, and it feels strange but perfectly right, like something I’ve always been looking for that’s finally come home to me.

But look at me Edge, I’m scared. I’m the one who was always pushing; you were the sensible voice of reason pushing me back. _We can’t, not now, not here, not yet._ Maybe I was counting on you to keep doing that. At the beach today—I suppose I was waiting for that patient, fatherly voice, or else for a good kick in the bollix. Certainly wasn’t expecting what actually happened. Wasn’t expecting you to lick my stupid fat fingers. Oh Edge. Now I want to return the favor. 

“Give me your hand, love.”

“Did you just call me ‘love?’”

“I did.”

“Do it again?”

“Love.”

You’re straddling me, your hard thighs holding me motionless. (Your hard _everything_.) I take your hand, bring your index finger to my mouth, run my tongue under and over each joint, your smooth skin, the callus at the tip that almost moves me to tears with every sound and memory it evokes. This is a good vantage point. While I suck your fingers I can watch the flush coming back into your skin, along the length of your throat, up to your perfectly sculpted features that don’t get nearly enough praise from the rest of the world.

“But we’re here for _you_ now, Bono.” Your voice is ragged, breathless.

“I’m here for both of us.”

You release me just long enough for us to tear at each other’s clothing. You fumble with my shirt buttons, I fumble with your jeans, until I realize I can just slide them down over your hips, still buttoned. That’s how like a reed you are. 

It’s not as if we’ve never seen each other naked, but we must have been forcing ourselves not to really _see_. Now we can see as much as we want.

“Oh, just look at you, Slim.”

“Look at _you_.”

You look almost reverent as you take my cock in your hand together with yours, and God, now I’m seeing stars. You're full of surprises. As much as I've thought about you over the years, I can’t quite believe this. And I can’t look away. The intensity is almost like pain. My eyes dart from your hand to your face. Which is just like your stage-face, that same concentration, that deep focus, but more, more.

"Edge. My God." I reach for your hand, your hand that's holding us.

The room fills with the sound of our breathing. You lose your famous composure and fall forward, and then we’re just moving together, grinding, like boys who haven’t learned yet to do anything else. You laugh in my ear. It’s so sweet, Edge, it's sweet forbidden fruit. Your back rippling, your ass under my hands. I keep trying to catch bits of you, your pointed chin, your earlobe, between my teeth. I could eat you, I could eat all of you. 

You shove my hair back from my forehead with hot fingers. “You’re so beautiful. Fuck, you don’t even know.”

“Edge, no.”

“Yes, you are, God, I want to—”

I reach up to touch your face. Your eyes are dark green, like sea glass. You shake your head. Plant the lightest, sweetest kiss on my lips.

How could anyone ever have left you. How could anyone stand to lose you, your saintly face, your sweet, taut body, your ivory skin. It's so good, you and I just rocking here together, rocking and rolling in the rising heat. 

You lean down and breathe my name, right in my ear. You say a few other things too. _I want to see you come, I want to make you come, I want to feel it._ You take us both in your hand again and I slam my eyes shut and see unnameable colors wheeling across the insides of my eyelids. I hook my fingers into your flesh. I can’t pull you close enough. I think if I could, I would pull you right through me. 

Nothing, nothing in the universe is as important as your hand, as the movement of your fingers. This has always been true.

You gasp and I hear myself calling your name. When it finally happens it’s piercing, exquisite, I can’t remember ever, anything quite—like we’re singing together. Like our bodies together are making a song, a rhyme, and your face, your face mirroring mine. This warmth spilling everywhere, like honey. The scent of us in the air. Why would this be given to us if we’re not meant to have it? 

“Beautiful Edge.”

“Sweetheart. You’re gorgeous. Gorgeous.” 

For a while you lie perfectly still with your cheek in the hollow of my chest. Just breathing. Warm skin, your damp hair on my neck. Again: familiar and strange. All I can do is run my hands up and down your spine and marvel at how fearfully and wonderfully you were made, how different we are, how the same, how we fit together.

You raise your head, prop yourself on your elbows. Give me the ol' shy Edge smile. Kiss my nose.

“Really Edge? My worst bit.”

“Your best bit. Makes you look like a wild Biblical prophet, especially when you haven’t shaved.”

“I guess I can accept that.”

“And your mouth, I used to stare at your mouth all the time, I thought it was like this little rose that only bloomed in fair weather, because otherwise it could be this tight little bud… It’s still just like that.”

“You’re a poet, The Edge, so you are.” Not gonna make me cry though.

“I used to…I still have to force myself not to stare at you too much.”

“I always think you’re staring ‘cause I annoy you.”

“Well, probably. Sometimes.”

“You’re fucking perfect, The Edge.”

“Of course I am.”

Kissing you is like falling down into the softest darkness, into some secret, sacred place that I only suspected was there, until now. And as each minute passes I know I’ll have to go there, again and again. 

Your room is all blue shadows. It's getting late. “Edge—God, I can’t stay here much longer.”

“I know, sweetheart.”

I have to bring us back to reality. “I guess I should at least take a bird bath before I go.”

“Ha. Yes, you should of course. Little bird.”

"You gonna call me that?"

"Maybe. You sound like one sometimes."

"Oh, great. Bird bath for a little bird, then."

But I know she’s going to see it on me—I mean you, Edge, this, us—no matter what I do. Somehow, she’ll know. Oh, what have I done now.

“Bono. Stay here in bed for ten more minutes.”

“Ten, specifically?”

“Ten. Five’s not enough, but if we get to fifteen, I won’t be able let you go.”

“Love. Okay, ten minutes.”

“Ten. Starting…now.”

We’re going to have to talk about all of this, you and I. It's going to be complicated. But for now, for ten minutes, I’m just going to lie here in your arms. We’ll lie here and watch the luminous green numbers on your clock, counting down. Always counting down.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HOLY SHIT, SHE’S GONNA DO ANOTHER CHAPTER? She is!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I never planned for this to be anything more than a one-shot, but then I just couldn’t leave it. There are a couple of tiny references in this chapter to a fic I wrote back when I was just starting out, called [Call and Response](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9219944). That doesn’t really matter, but I guess I’m sort of rewriting/refining my own head canon? Anyway, I’m so pleased and humbled by all the lovely comments on this little story, so thank you all for that. I hope you like this chapter as well. It’s a little more serious than the others. I hope that's okay. Sometimes they just keep talking at me, which is really weird. Any way, this continues right where the last chapter left off.

Driving home, I’m exhausted, ecstatic, terrified, and shaken to my core. Every song on the radio is weighted with meaning. The _wrong_ meaning. Here, for example, is our dear Sinead singing “Nothing Compares 2 U.” Change the station, and here she is again. The song is inescapable right now—that feeling of longing and bottomless loss before the loss even happens, before it’s even an idea.

And here’s the curving tree-lined street where I still sometimes feel like a prowler, the houses all hidden away behind stone walls and wrought-iron gates. Even the moon looks different here than it does in town. Rounder, brighter. Our own house looks like a stage setting. It’s big and beautiful, but right now it feels impermanent, like something that could disappear in an instant. I stay out in the driveway for five whole minutes, my heart thudding away, before I can bear to let myself in.

Ali is waiting just inside the front door. She looks beautiful, dark, and pale in the lamplight, holding Jordan. They both look as if they’ve been watching for me, as if I’m a sailor who’s been out too long at sea. Jordan is tugging Ali’s hair. I don’t think I’m going to live through this. Maybe I shouldn’t expect to.

“What’s going on?” Ali asks.

“Nothing. I mean, just getting home.”

She studies my face. “You high?”

“No!”

She laughs at me, disengages the little fist from her hair, and passes Jordan over to me.

“Sorry I left you alone for so long today, ladies.” I kiss each one on the forehead. Best I can do right now. Jordan wriggles in my arms like a puppy.

“You don’t even smell like beer.”

“Do I normally smell like beer?”

Grin. "Did you eat dinner?”

“Not exactly. I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.” Please don’t ask any more questions. Please stop sniffing me.

“Aha! You smell like the beach.”

Thank fuck. “Yeah, we drove out to Bull Island, to Dollymount. Kind of froze our arses off for a bit. And then we just sat there trying to imagine things, you know, for the next record.” Although in fact we didn’t talk about music at all. Except to Fiona and Maggie. And Percy.

“So is Edge okay? He just looked so miserable the other day. I was worried about him.”

“I know. But he seemed fine today, really.” This is the last thing I want to talk about. You, I mean. I don’t want to talk about you, Edge. I haven’t had a chance to sort anything out yet.

I lift the baby up over my face and kiss her tummy. She smells clean and sweet from her bath. I suppose I’m hiding behind her. But she shrieks happily and says _da!,_ so I try to get her to say it again. Kiss, kiss. “Say da!” She does not comply.

“Do you mind watching her for a bit? She’s fed and bathed. I’m just so wiped out, all I want is to lie down in bed and read my book.”

“Of course, of course, my love.”

So there will be no heavy conversations, at least not tonight. I’ve actually imagined a situation like this one a few times—me trying to hide a transgression, just in case I had to. But I never thought the temptress would be you, Edge. I just figured you and I would keep advancing on and rebuffing each other until the band finally broke up, maybe in the year 2000. We’ll be pretty old by then anyway.

No, wait a second. 2000 is only ten years away. How the fuck did that happen.

Despite the hour, Jordan is still pretty perky, so I carry her into the big, warm front room, gather up some little toys, and turn the TV on. I don’t know why we ever imagined she would go to sleep alone in her crib by age one. (You did try to warn me, Edge.) It’s like with every new milestone—first word, learning to crawl, pulling herself up—she gets more and more clingy and wants to be with one of us, or ideally with both of us. It must be scary to feel yourself evolving so quickly. Anyway, why should a baby ever be alone? Maybe _we_ were raised by wolves, but we don’t have to be wolves ourselves. Or maybe that’s a bad analogy. I’m pretty sure wolves keep their pups close.

Jordan says, “da da da da da!” and attempts to smother me with her tiny hand.

“Yes, that’s me, da da da da da!”

Ali really does get tired out, even if we sometimes have help. They use up your life-force, babies do. This thought leads me, as ever, to thoughts of my own mother. I know how exhausting I was, a demon-child apparently. It’s been pointed out to me, of course, that lots of mothers have worse children to raise than I was, and they keep living anyway. Doctors have told me there was a flaw built into Mam’s design, and something was going to set it off sooner or later. But I can’t help thinking if I had been just a bit more docile, she might have had more time.

This is a pointless mental exercise and I really wish I could stop. I have enough to worry about.

I stretch out on the couch with the baby on my chest. I’m prepared for us both to fall asleep and stay there all night. Which is exactly what happens, of course.

*

“How are the new songs coming?”

This from Larry. We’re having a “work meeting” at our cozy table in the back of our favorite pub. There’s a Saturday afternoon hubbub out front—laughter, music, glasses clinking. Larry is sitting next to you. I’m opposite, next to Adam. Am I looking at you too much? Not enough? Is that your foot tapping mine under the table? What am I supposed to do? Everything is so strange, I can’t help but fidget. Fortunately, my fidgeting isn’t unusual enough for anyone else to notice. You, of course, are as still and inscrutable as a sphinx. Eyes narrowed and content, lips curled just a bit, nose perfect. Your bandana has printed skulls. Tough guy. I want to kick you. I want to kiss you.

“Well,” you say, “we’re still kind of soaking up new influences.”

Larry rolls his eyes. “That sounds like a load of shite.”

I’m on the verge of hysterical laughter. To make matters worse, some insistently sexy, throbby electronic tune is making conversation all but impossible. I see your eyes light up with recognition.

“What is this, The Edge?”

“Nine Inch Nails, from the States. The song is called ‘Sin.’”

“Well. Evocative band name _and_ title.” Maybe a little heavy for an afternoon down the pub. Or maybe just right. I keep my eyes on the varnished wooden tabletop and listen. Okay, this is pretty cool. It makes me want to dance. It also makes me want throw you on the floor and violate you. “It sounds a bit filthy. His voice.”

“It _is_ filthy. Great record though. Just one guy in a studio, can you believe that?” You’re grinning, all excited. “In fact, I think if our new record is gonna sound like anything at all, it should sound like this.”

“Or maybe not,” Larry mutters.

You lay your hand on his shoulder, a white bird on black leather. “Maybe just a little,” you say.

“Maybe, if you want to lose all the fans.”

“We can get new ones.”

“Edge.” I try to catch your eye. I’m of the feeling that things will be better if we can at least throw a couple of acceptable songs together before we get too deeply into how the record should sound. Meanwhile, Adam and Larry are shooting meaningful looks at one another.

“Look,” says Adam, “we’re perfectly happy to change things up, but remember that people do expect certain things of us—”

“Yeah, they expect songs.”

“Shut up a second, Larry. So if you two want to go off and do whatever you think you have to do, that’s fine, but please don’t forget we’re in this band as well.”

See, Adam knows things. I mean, he _knows_ things. _Things_. Adam always, somehow, knows things. He also talks with his hands. His hand is right now on a collision course with his pint. I catch the hand before disaster can strike. Catch it and hold on.

“That’s right. You’re not escaping this band, buddy. Nor you, Larry, so don’t even fuck around.”

Larry rolls his eyes again, but then he aims a brief, teen-idol smile at me. “I have no desire to escape,” he says. “What the fuck else would I do with my life?”

Thank fuck.

*

The house echoes the way it does when no one’s been home all day. It feels almost sterile after the pub, and smells of nothing at all. “The cleaning people have been in,” I say, by way of explanation. Another luxury I’ve almost grown accustomed to.

You pat my shoulder. You understand me. I pull the door closed behind us and lock it.

“Ali’s down at her parents’ place till tomorrow. Her mum’s always complaining about not seeing the baby enough.”

“Well, that’s what mums do.”

“You did warn me about that.”

“I did.”

We stand facing each other in the entryway, amid the polished surfaces, under the tasteful chandelier. We’re supposed to go up to my “little” office that faces the sea, and work on new songs. Just rough drafts, something we can bring to the others next time. You’ve brought your own guitar, because you claim you can’t think as well if you use one of mine. My personality has soaked into my guitars, you say. They distract you. Anyway, I think we both know we’re not going to write anything today.

“I haven’t actually talked to her, Edge.”

You nod. “Well. You will soon, right? I mean, if this is gonna be… something.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Well, yeah.”

Nope, we are definitely not writing anything today. We can barely even speak.

I take a bottle of Bordeaux from the wine rack in the kitchen; grab a couple of glasses. Carefully. I close the cupboard very gently. You follow me, a few paces behind. I can feel how lightly you’re trying to walk. Because maybe if we’re as unobtrusive as possible, if we don’t disturb anything in the house, it’ll feel as if we’re not really doing anything wrong.

Sunlight floods my little room. You open the wine and pour it; I open the windows to the breeze. We spend a few minutes looking out. Drinking. Not touching. The DART pulls in way down in the distance, and releases its cargo of locals and beachcombers. The sea is deep blue today, ruffled and folded by the wind. I set my glass on the windowsill, and you do the same.

“Bono.”

I turn at the sound of your voice and we fall into each other. Why, why do you feel so completely right. Your neck, your cheek, your hair spilling down. The hard pressure of your chest, your beautiful strong hands. _Kiss me, kiss me._ There can’t be anything wrong about this. I taste the wine on your lips and your tongue—that sacramental, Sunday morning taste.

“Oh, Slim.”

“You gonna start calling me that now?”

“Might. Sometimes. Unless you get fat.”

“Bono.”

“It could happen.”

You pull away to glare at me from under your caveman brows, the way you’ve been doing since we were kids.

“You don’t scare me, Edge.”

“No?” You pull me close again; you kiss my neck lingeringly. Just the slightest hint of your teeth in that kiss. _Yes._ You slip your hands under my shirt and play arpeggios on my spine. We’ve been hanging around each other for fifteen years. More. How did we ever manage it with all this lust brewing under the surface?

“Edge.”

“Mm. Sweetheart.”

“No one’s ever called me that but you.” I whisper this in your ear like a secret.

“How can that be? It’s exactly what you are.” Your hand roves up and down my thigh. “This is sweet.” You grab my arse, crush me against you. “This is really sweet.”

“Gorgeous Edge.”

“Gorgeous _you_ … Oh. That’s interesting.”

“What?”

“Look out the window. Just over there.”

You point, I turn, and you use this moment of disequilibrium to grab me from behind, a little roughly. Before I can speak you’re undoing my trousers with deft fingers.

“Edge?”

You kiss my neck again, my ear. “I’m taking my revenge for the day at the beach.”

“Oh. Well then, if you must.”

“I must. That’s it, lean back on me. There. Ah, Jesus, B, you’re so beautiful.”

“You keep saying that but… Edge… hey, this isn’t fair. I didn’t make you stay on your feet.”

“Be strong for me. Enjoy the view of the sea.” You wrap your free arm around my chest. Not too tightly, but tightly enough. “You could do with a little roughing up.”

“You thug.” I reach up and back to put my hand on you wherever I can, to gain some kind of purchase on you. I find the back of your neck. Still slender and delicate, still you. Yet I’m enjoying this new (to me) version of you, pressed to my back, your hips rocking just a little against my ass, your voice in my ear, calling me angel, baby, sweetheart, as if you can’t help yourself. Your hand. Your hand… And the warm breeze on my skin, and the curtains blowing, and the fear that some idiot could decide to come scrambling up the hill, look up at the window, and see you wrapped around me, both of us breathing fast, your hand stroking my chest, your other hand moving on my cock, rhythmic and insistent. I don’t think my legs will hold me up much longer.

“Edge, seriously…”

“Seriously, I’ve been thinking about you forever.” You whisper this into my neck, you touch my earlobe with your tongue. “Seriously, I was thinking about you last night. All night. Couldn’t sleep. I thought I could smell you on my sheets. I had to—”

“Edge, love, I can’t keep standing here.”

You relent, and we move clumsily toward my old red couch. The couch was in my first house as well, looking like a relic from a New Orleans bordello; we always sat there to write. I drop onto it and look up at you, still on your feet, framed by the window and the sky. There are thin clouds now, a vapor trail, lit from below by the sun. Ribbons of light in the sky, and you, my magnificent bearded pirate man, your shirt hanging open, looking like you’ve climbed into my house with a knife between your teeth.

“What are you laughing about?”

“You. Come here. Please. Lie next to me. No, like this.”

“Like to be on your back, do you.”

“Yes. With you, Edge.”

For the briefest moment you look young and shy, the way you always did, and if my heart doesn’t give out right now, then nothing can ever hurt it.

“Edge. Love.” I take your hand and pull it back towards me, where I need you to be.

“Pretty blue-eyed boy.” Your eyes travel from my face down the length of my body.

“ _You’re_ the pretty boy. Perfect alabaster Edge.” With your tireless hand. “Oh, it’s your _left_.”

“Does that make it better for you?”

“Yes. It’s the hand that—oh.”

“You angel. The hand that what?”

“It’s where the music lives.”

“Well, I want to get some music out of you.”

“God, Edge.”

“I know you’re close. I can feel it. Look at me, B.”

Oh Edge. All the colors reeling around your beautiful face. You’re still talking to me. You want me to come, you want to see me come, and I’m nearly there, I’m there, _God_ , I’m right there, in the hot circle of your hand, the pleasure coming in bursts, like light.

*

“I’m—never mind.”

“What, Edge?”

“I’m afraid I might get addicted to watching you come, that’s all.”

“Well. That’s great for you, but what’s in it for _me_?”

You aim your smile down at my chest, while you dabble your fingers in my come as if it were some kind of pleasant elixir. You strange boy. I’m so fascinated by you. You have somehow become an utter mystery to me.

“I haven’t stopped thinking about you for days, Bono. It’s so weird.”

“It _is_ weird.”

“Well, maybe not _so_ weird.”

“Yeah, maybe not.”

“Quit that. Anyway, maybe now I can say all these things that I only used to think about. Or can I?”

“You can say anything to me, Edge.” _I love you. Say that._

“How do I even say this? You already know this, but… Everyone just wants to be near you. I’ve looked out into arenas after a show and I’ve seen people huddled there by the stage, or even up in their seats. Like they can’t bear to leave. The cleaning staff is sweeping up around their feet, and they’re still standing there. Some of them even cry.”

“Edge. That’s not for me, that’s for all of us. That’s for the songs.”

“No, it’s for you. It is. People feel good when they’re near you, and they don’t want that to end. To leave you is to go into exile.”

 _I love you. Tell me you love me._ “No, that’s not me. That’s all of us. I’m not anything on my own.”

“You’re plenty, sweetheart. And somehow I get to have you like this.”

“You do, you lucky bastard.”

I don’t want you to see me cry. I reach up to struggle with the knot in your bandana.

“Oh Bono, don’t.”

“Yes, I’m doing this. Ah, there we go.” I drop the bandana to the floor. “You’re ridiculous, you know that? You’re perfect. You’ve the face of a sculpted deity. Shake out your hair, like a model. Go on.”

“Shut up.”

“Make me.”

So you kiss me. I kiss you. I hold you close with my arms and my legs wrapped around you, the whole hard length of you, and find myself sinking again into the dark, wordless place that’s been waiting for me—this warm place that was made just for me, that’s shaped for me. I imagine that this is what it feels like to be in the womb. This floating perfection, this complete acceptance. I have to stop you before I disappear in you.

“Look Edge, there’s this very specific thing I want to do.”

You stroke my face, my hair. “Anything you want.”

“Okay, then let me go.”

“I don’t think so.” You press me deeper into the couch.

“Come on. You won’t be sorry.” With some difficulty I extricate myself from underneath you and slide down to the floor, onto my knees. You’re watching me with slightly more wonderment than the situation warrants, so I must take your face in my hands and kiss you again, and just breathe you in for another minute, my genius guitar hero, my idol, my most ardent fan. “You should sit up, I think. I would like you to.”

“Hm? Oh, I see.”

Now you’re right where I want you, above me, while I free you from your expensively ripped-up jeans, your ridiculous American designer underwear. “You think those people in the stadiums are there for me. Maybe. But I’m only there because of you. You know that.”

“Bono.”

You seem almost afraid to move, touching my hair as tentatively as if I were a newborn kitten. I have to pause again, rest my cheek on your thigh. I’m so moved by you, and your body’s beauty, all its lush dark hair, damp in places with the evidence of me. Your delicate skin underneath. All the slender strength of you.

Your fingertips touch my cheek, my lips, so lightly; I could cry at your gentleness. The sound you make when I take you in my mouth is almost too soft to hear. I’ve thought about this so many times. I don’t believe any two men are exactly the same, yet I know how this feels for you. It’s a bit more complex with a woman; a subtle art requiring some instruction, and yet I love it. But this is easier. Down as far as possible, up again with a certain amount of force and determination. Linger at the sweet spot briefly, then down again. I think I love this. I do. I love your taste, your scent. You’re quiet at first, but as the minutes pass you begin to whisper, you moan. Little incoherent obscenities.

I know you’re watching me. Your hands are busy, holding my hair away from my face. You’re watching me suck your cock. Oh. I’ve wanted to do this forever. I first thought about it when I was eighteen or so. You were a little younger—

“Bono—”

I imagined it all, just like this, and I imagined telling you you were the only boy I would ever—

“Bono, I’m—”

_I know, love. Yes, go ahead._

You come sobbing a little, laughing a little. Thrusting into my mouth, whispering my name, cradling my head in your hands. I savor the oceanic taste of you. I love you, Edge. I just want to say it.

“Come here, come back up here with me.”

You take my hands, pull me back onto the couch. I stretch out beside you and lay my head in the soft thicket of hair on your chest. You're so warm. I listen to your heart as it races along, then slows. You are so beautiful lying here with your eyes closed and your lips parted, like a young knight fallen on a battlefield. Not that I would ever say that kind of shite out loud.

“Fuck, Edge, you’re perfect.”

“I know. Anyway…Bono."

"Yes love."

"Have you ever done that before? With a man, I mean. Obviously.”

“No. Just you.”

“Oh." Your hand moves in soothing little circles on my back. "Not that it matters. You can do anything you like, of course.”

This hurts. How noble you’re trying to be, giving me a freedom I haven’t asked for and don’t really want. “Edge. I’m flattered if you think I have experience, but I was just using my instincts. As a man in possession of a cock of my own, I didn't find it difficult to figure you out.”

“My demon boy.”

“I thought I was an angel.”

“Only when you’re not talking.”

“Stay here with me tonight, Edge.”

“Sweetheart. Of course.”

*

A week passes. We have not written any songs. I have not spoken to Ali about us. Life has intervened, and you and I haven’t even been alone since I woke up in your arms, exhausted and blissful, last Sunday morning.

I drive back to Bull Island, on my own this time. A typical Irish day, overcast, misty, with the ever-present threat of rain. I don’t mind. It’s good weather for thinking.

Today I can’t be sure that any of what’s happened between us is real. Has something life-altering occurred? Or was it just a minor escalation of the back-and-forth and not-quite we’ve been doing all these years anyway? Is it out of your system now? (It’s not out of mine.) But I do think it’s unfair that I, Bono Vox of U2, husband, father, friend to multitudes, renowned breaker-of-hearts, and platonic consort of a couple of the world’s most beautiful women, should find myself all alone on a rainy beach, wondering what the fuck is going on.

Oh Edge.

I’ve been thinking about what you said, about those fans who don’t want to go home. I suppose they feel similar to how girls once felt about Elvis or The Beatles. I’m not comparing us to those guys. I just think the feeling is the same, if on a smaller scale. Everyone’s used to pop fans nowadays, and no one treats them as a spectacle. No film crews in the girls’ faces, no reporters rolling their eyes for the viewers at home. Besides, with the advent of MTV and mini-camcorders everywhere, nobody is willing to look that uncool anymore.

I was thinking there must have been boys as well—boys who felt just as intensely about not only the music, but the men. But boys from thirty years ago couldn’t possibly shriek or cry or tear at their hair on telly, even if they wanted to.

Anyway, regardless of how (or if) the new record comes together, if we do manage to keep our audience, we should acknowledge—during the tour, maybe, somehow—those fans. The boys, I mean. Let them know we have no problem with them. Give them a high-sign from stage. I don’t know.

Here’s a shock: Workers in bright yellow helmets are swarming over our dune. _Our_ dune, Edge. It’s collapsed, apparently. (Oops.) The men are actually dumping truckloads of imported sand on it, and replanting the sea grasses.

As I stand watching, some kind of manager-type struts up to me. A little bantam, shorter even than me. Pens in his pocket.

“Howyeh, Bono,” he says. As if we’re old chums. He turns out to be one of those talkative, ebullient types. (You know how _they_ are.) “Sure, someone had fun digging this place up. It’s against the law, you know. It’s fine to dig down by the shoreline, sandcastles and all, but these dunes protect the city from flooding, and all kinds of seabirds nest here. I know _you_ understand—it’s a fragile ecosystem.”

I tell him I understand, sure I do. First time I’ve ever heard the phrase “fragile ecosystem” in a local accent. Ireland must really be coming into its own.

But my heart aches anyway, at the complete erasure of our little shelter. I hope this isn’t a portent of things to come. I’m feeling a bit like a fragile ecosystem myself. Think I might drive over to your house.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Less beach, more sequence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might be delusional at this point but people seem to like this overwrought tale of love and sex and rock’n’roll, so I thought I'd see if I could sustain it for one more chapter. This was tough because I feel really uncomfortable about Ali, but I can’t just pretend she’s not there, you know? She is very much there. If I ever saw her in real life I’d have to give her the silent Manly-Man Nod of Respect™. 
> 
> Also, despite having read books and interviews, and even having watched documentaries, I have no clue what it really might feel like to be U2 in a studio trying to write songs. Also two, I seem to have lost that gentle breeziness that made the first chapter so surprising. I’m sorry. This is just how they manifested to me this time. Dark and a bit heavy, like a wall of sand. (Nice U2 reference.)
> 
> Warning: There is nothing remotely sexual till like page 7 of my Google doc! But don’t worry, because they really really love each other. You’ll see!
> 
> Special thanks to the coven for the philtrum discussion. And thanks to all who read, kudo, and comment. It’s really kind of a big deal to me! <3

You’re here with me. A big bed, white and soft. We could be anywhere in the world, but we’re together, and the joy I feel is something I’ve only experienced in dreams, never in waking life. Maybe it’s a glimpse of the next life. Maybe heaven is just a luxury hotel where everyone is finally sorted into the rooms where they belong. I suppose it’s not too blasphemous to think heaven could be a hotel, or even a series of hotels in a series of magnificent cities, along a beautiful, open highway. Anyway, it’s where we are. A massive hotel bed, and we are connected, conjoined, one. I hardly dare look anywhere but at your beautiful face, and at your smile that is still, in spite of everything, just a little bit hesitant, a little bit shy.

I say, “this is just what I wanted, Edge.” Dreams being what they are, I say it in the voice of a twelve-year-old. And like an annoying big brother, you give me a little punch on the arm.

_God._

In fact it’s Ali nudging my arm, in our own bedroom, in real life, Dublin, Ireland, earth, at a very dark hour of the night. “You were having a nightmare, love,” she says.

I can feel no immediate physical evidence of this dream. Thankfully. Adolescence is truly over, then. “Not a nightmare, no.”

“But you were talking in your sleep, and you never do that. You scared me. I’m sorry I woke you.”

“It’s okay. You can _always_ wake me.”

My eyes adjust to the dark. Ali is leaning on her elbow, watching me. She hasn’t said so, but I know she thinks I’ve been acting strangely, even more than I usually do, and I know it’s been bothering her.

“Let me ask you something,” she says. I start to speak, but she waves a hand in the air between us before I can deflect her. “Is there someone?”

“What do you mean?”

Her eyes bore into me. “Please.”

“No,” I lie. Because how could I even explain? Not at this hour, anyway.

“Are you sure? Not that actress-person from America, or—?”

“Who? No. _No_.”

“Bono.” Even in the dark I can see her thinking, the cogs and wheels turning behind her eyes. She just knows things. She’s like Adam that way. Actually, she’s like you that way. I seem fated to spend my life in a den of psychics. “Bono, is there something going on with you and Edge?”

My tongue adheres instantly to the roof of my mouth. How does she—did we leave evidence somewhere? I attempt a laugh, but can’t manage it. There is no glib way around this at all. Nothing. The room suddenly feels very small and cold.

“I guess that’s my answer. Well, I’m not really surprised. You’ve always been in love with each other.”

I attempt a series of monosyllables to indicate shock, outrage, denial. Nothing really happens. Ali grabs both my hands and tries to warm them between hers, but my hands are enormous and awful. This is all awful.

“Ali.”

“I’m not going to say it’s alright. It isn’t. But I knew from the start that being married to you wouldn’t be easy. And I told you way back then that there are things I can live with and things I can’t. I knew a certain amount of nonsense was to be expected, and it was fine as long as you always came back to me.”

“Ali.”

“And I guess, if there has to be someone else, I would prefer it to be Edge instead of…” her voice trails off.

The moment for me to issue a strong denial has passed, obviously. And as if I haven’t been feeling guilty enough, here she is doing all my work for me. I haven’t even had to say a word. I just had to call out your name in a dream. Incredible that in all these years I haven’t already done that. “Ali.”

“But I refuse to be one of those long-suffering saint types. ‘Ah, she’s a good woman for staying with him, God love her.’ That isn’t me, okay? Don’t—what are you doing?”

“Crying. It’s a thing us flawed human beings do sometimes.” As if this is a time for me to be flippant. I’ve been sitting up tensely, but now I collapse into the mattress and try to pull her with me. “Don’t leave me. I love you so much. Always. You have to know that’s true.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” Her face softens. “Really, I always knew that the two of you were a double act, like…Morecambe and Wise.”

I can’t help but laugh at this; it’s brilliant. Though I do manage to keep from asking which one of us she thinks is which. “You seem to have already given this some thought.”

“Well yeah. I had to.”

“Jesus. I’m sorry, darling.”

“But look, do you—does he love you?”

“Em, we never said, it isn’t—” I shrug. I don’t want to explain what we’ve been doing, or that we’ve left it pretty much undefined.

“So this just started? Oh, poor baby. What a mess.”

With tragicomic timing, the real baby calls out from across the hall. “I’ll go,” I say, quickly. It is the very, _very_ least I can do.

“No, don’t.” Ali rolls over, gets up. “We’ll talk more tomorrow.”

She’s brisk and efficient; she sounds just fine chirping at Jordan, but I’m sure some of it is an act. I know it is. I’ve known her forever, and she’s known me. Needless to say, no one will sleep anymore tonight. Silence falls, thick and heavy, on the house.

 

 

***

I’m feeling pretty shaky when I get to the studio the next day. The last to arrive, jumped up on coffee and nicotine. I’ve no idea what to say, or what any of us are gonna do. All of my song ideas are skeletal to begin with, and now no words will come to me, because when I write, I like to tell the truth. But how can I possibly tell the truth?

I will have to learn to lie.

I walk in as resolutely, and as loudly, as I can. If I show any doubt about our future, the whole machine could break down. But it’s okay. There you are, sitting on one of the old battered couches with your guitar in your lap, and when you look up and smile at me from across the long, high-ceilinged room, across the floor strewn with rugs and cables, my spirits lift. I wanna sing all the songs to _you_ , Edge.

There’s the usual flurry of talk, shuffling around to get everyone in the right place, cases snapped open and shut, strings tuned. From behind the drum kit, Larry lets loose with a volley of percussive explosions and his usual biting remarks. If he didn’t look just like a cherub, I swear I’d crease him.

“This is something I wrote last night,” you say, once we’re all settled. “It’s just me and a drum machine, so don’t get excited. But I’m almost comfortable with it. I think it could be made into something good.” You slot a tape into the machine, press play.

My eyes ache from smoke and lack of sleep, but they’re glued to your slim fingers, playing along silently while we all listen to the tape. _Boom chonk, ba-boom-boom chonk_ goes the drum machine, and the riff you’ve written sounds like an angry Vespa criss-crossing the room, crashing into walls.

“Ah, brilliant Edge.” I hardly know what I’m saying.

Adam says, “It’s a bit unstructured, isn’t it?”

I force myself back to awareness. I can’t just sit here staring, longing. I’m supposed to be yelling at everyone. “Maybe, but we can give it structure. That’s the whole idea. Let me try to sing something over this part…”

“This should be interesting.”

“Shut up for one minute of your adorable wee life, Larry.”

“Okay, okay.”

_“In my dream I’m…a bit unstructured_

(General laughter.)

_And I’ve nothing left to say.”_

I focus on your face. Though we haven’t spoken in a few days I can feel you steadying me with your eyes, as if they could hold me up the same way your arms can.

 _“I was dreaming about all the bad things I did today_  
_And ummm…hey baby whatsa matter_  
_What was that you say_  
_Ummm la la la your pale green eyes_  
_Don’t fade away_  
_Don’t walk away…”_

“Wow, brilliant.”

“They’re just sounds, Larry.” I’m too tired, too freaked out to be properly annoyed. “You know they’re not gonna stay like that.”

“Yeah, but the whole thing is sort of terrible, isn’t it?”

You roll your eyes and say, “gosh, thanks.” Oh Edge, if only I could throw myself down in front of you and snarl at the world, hold it at bay.

“Two things, okay?” Larry rakes his fingers through his perfectly coiffed hair. “One is that I just don’t understand why writing always has to be such a nightmarish process for us. I mean, I was dreading today. Even after all this time. It’s like tooth extraction without laughing gas.”

“Well, you’re not wrong.”

“And two—I guess I just still don’t understand what the two of you are thinking about. I mean, I feel like you’ve gone off to another planet where I can’t quite reach you.”

He looks sincerely distressed, and you and I glance at each other from opposite ends of the room. Why are you so far away from me? You look like you’re gearing up for yet another explanation of electronic music and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and why you think our roots as a band aren’t really in America after all, and while I generally agree, I just want to stop you, because none of that matters very much. What matters is rhythm, pulse, heat, connection. What matters to me is your neck, your wrist, your scent. Your tensed and trembling body. I want the record to sound like that. Like you. I want to call it “Love.” I want to call it “Man.”

Fortunately Adam, the diplomat, steps in before I can start babbling. “Look, we understand that we have to move into a new phase. We’ve all agreed on that, more than once. We just don’t understand, I think, quite what the two of you want that new phase to be. We’re not sure you really know either.”

“We don’t want to sound like fuckin’ Depeche Mode. I don’t want to be hitting little electronic pads, okay?”

The fact of the matter is, I don’t care what kind of drums we use. I just don’t want to make anyone else feel unhappy today. So I say, “never, Larry. Nobody wants that. That’s not what we are.”

“Good.” He plays a quick little flourish on a ride cymbal.

 

 

***

We work on “Unstructured (Working Title)” with real drums, for about an hour, and then I go out to get rid of what feels like several gallons of metabolized coffee.

In the bathroom mirror, I’m ghastly. I’m red-eyed, poorly shaven. It was hard to leave the house today. I was clinging to Ali, trying to help her out with this or that, even though she didn’t need any help. She was acting like nothing had changed between us at all. I think it would have been easier if she’d thrown something at me or threatened to pack up and leave.

And you. In the last few days you’ve only called me to talk business, and it feels like we’re back where we’ve always been. We have a complex history of finding ourselves crushed together at the end of a long night—a few kisses, a grope—and then running off our separate ways, and never even speaking of it.

But I thought things would be different now. We’ve crossed what anyone would consider a pretty serious line. We’ve held each other naked in the dark. We’ve done some fairly intimate things with our hands and our mouths. Just thinking about it all causes a seismic shift in my body. Edge, I want you all the time. All the time.

What can I write? What can I possibly sing about any of this? What’s going to happen to us?

The door swings open and I realize I’ve been worrying a sodden paper towel between my hands for several minutes.

“Bono?”

“Edge.”

“You alright?”

Nothing’s alright. I smile at you anyway—the show must go on.

You cross the room in a single bound, like the superhero you are, and press me into the tiled wall. You slide down my body till you’re on your knees; you rub your gorgeous face against my stomach, my hip, my thigh. The relief I feel is almost as palpable as it was in my dream. I could cry with it. You’re the only one who can reduce me to this. I’m not usually the helpless type.

“Sweetheart, sweetheart,” you murmur against my hip, my cock.

“God, Edge…” I knot my fingers into your hair. (Want you so much.) “We’re in the fuckin’ studio, Edge.”

“I know.”

“Everyone’s here with us, Edge.”

“I know.” Your hands trace warm circles on my ass. “Don’t care.”

“How can you not care?” (Tell me you love me.)

“Just don’t.”

But there are loud noises in the hallway. A big, smoky cough—unmistakably Adam’s. A thud as if he’s crashed into some large object, a curse, another cough. He knows things, I’m sure of it. He’s laying the noisy drama on quite thick, so we have enough time to spring apart and straighten up. I’m untucking my shirt to hide my hard-on when he bursts through the door.

“Hiyah.”

“Hi Adam.”

“Yeah, hi. Just gonna have a piss, if you don’t mind.”

“Right,” I mutter. “We were having one of those talks like they do in the courtroom dramas. You know, like when the lawyers get pulled aside into a private conversation with the judge.”

“A sidebar,” you supply, helpfully.

“Yeah, that.”

“Okay.” Adam steps up to the urinal and releases his enviable member. You step in front of me as if to protect me from the view. This is the funniest damn thing you’ve ever done, and you don’t even realize you’ve done it.

“Jaysis, be careful with that, Adam. Someone could lose an eye.”

“Fuck off, Edge.”

Back in the studio, we plow through another song that may or may not go anywhere. You, however, are a rock god and a genius. No one else plays quite the way you do. Your fingers float over the strings with barely perceptible pressure, yet you make a glorious soundscape. Many have tried to imitate your sound; many have failed. I watch you and I have to keep swallowing. Your lips are pursed with concentration. A line of light paints the upper surface of your cheek, exaggerating the dark hollow beneath. You fuckin’ statue of a man. You slender David, kicking at pedals like they’re Goliath’s head. You’re fooling around with an Arabic scale that puts me in mind of belly-dancers, black kohl-rimmed eyes peeking over sheer veils. They’re dancing for me, but all I want is you.

 

 

***

Your bedroom is all blue shadows, open windows, the scent of nighttime trees. Spring is moving into ripe summer; the crickets have begun to sing. Leaving the studio earlier felt just like cutting out of school.

We’re standing in the center of the floor. You’ve got me by the hair, my head tipped back as far as it will go. You’re kissing the underside of my chin while my left leg tries of its own accord to climb you.

“Edge, love, we have things to talk about.”

“Have I ever managed to stop you from talking?”

“Yeah, but I’m serious.”

“Afterwards.” You nip the skin between my neck and shoulder with your teeth, a tiny, exquisite pain.

“After what, you brute?”

“I don’t know yet. What would you like?”

“So many things.”

“Talk to me about _that_.”

“Maybe.”

“Talk to me, Bono.” You breathe this into my ear.

“I want you, Edge. I want everything. Everything you’ve got.”

You’re holding me so hard that all of our shirt buttons, our belt buckles, my crucifix, and your heavy silver pendant are pressed into my flesh. I cling to you, suddenly remembering the one time you hit me, ten years ago now. Not that I didn’t deserve it; I was out of my mind and would have hurt someone else if you hadn’t stopped me. But I know that right now, you’re frustrated and angry at the others. Would I let you take that out on me, on my body? I think I would.

Only you aren’t like that, are you. Sweet Edge. You let me go, and begin to open my shirt with great care, button by button, your lips following your beautiful fingers, leaving a trail of kisses down my chest. “Why,” you whisper.

“Why what, Edge?”

“Why are you so gorgeous, why are you so soft and so hard, why didn’t we do this years ago before everything got so complicated?”

“Why do _you_ get to talk when I have to wait till later?”

“Oh, clever lad.”

“I am clever. You should know better than to try and match wits with me.”

Smiling just the way you did in my dream, you steer me over to your bed. You can look so hard sometimes, with that tough-guy bandana pulled low over your eyebrows. You can also look disarmingly cute when you smile, your thin face turning suddenly pouchy as a squirrel’s. You’ve always fascinated me, always, from the very first. The skinny black-haired kid sitting on the wall outside school, feet dangling, doodling on his jeans with a ballpoint pen. And now you’re this beautiful, brilliant man. This friend and lover. I can feel tears gathering in the corners of my eyes.

I feel a lot of other things, too. For example, your still-clothed body rubbing against my bare skin. Why is this so good? This not-quite cruelty, this almost-pain?

You roll onto your side, slide your hand down to my cock, instantly drawing every bit of me upward—even my chin, even my heels—as if your hand were a magnet, and I were a pile of iron filings.

“My love.” Yes, I will call you that. You can’t possibly object.

“Mm, just look at you. Have you been thinking about me?”

“Yes, Edge. You know I have.”

“I want to take care of you, sweetheart. I’ve been thinking about you all week. I’ve been thinking about all the ways I can make you come.”

“Just saying that again might work… What have I done to deserve you, Edge?”

“Everything. Don’t move, just let me touch you. You belong here, in my bed. You’re the center of everything. You’re the linchpin.”

“God, I hope that’s not true.”

“It is true. You know it is.”

No time to think about that. You move over me, you straddle me, you lean down to kiss me. I hold your perfect face between my hands. I kiss your forehead, your nose, your eyes. Your magnificent cheekbones make me think of places I’ve never seen and perhaps never will see. The steppes, the taiga, horsemen in fur riding through the snow. We kiss for a long time. Your mouth like honey, your teeth nipping my lower lip. We strain toward each other, then move apart, again and again. Prolonging this sweet desire.

Then you slip away toward the foot of the bed. But slowly, slowly. Taking time to kiss each nipple, the hollow of my chest. To run your tongue firmly down my belly. “So hard, so beautiful,” you whisper. My own breath sounds like the ocean in my ears. I love the way you take over. I could get used to relinquishing control.

“I owe you this from last time.”

“But it’s not about owing, Edge.”

“I know. But I haven’t been able to think about much else.”

“God, neither have I. I think about you all the time, in every way. Your face. And your hands that are so fucking beautiful. What _are_ you?”

“I’m your Edge.”

“My Edge. Well, everyone ought to have an Edge.”

“Yeah, but they can’t have _me_. I’m spoken for.”

You brace yourself on one arm. With your other hand you circle me, hold me firm as you take me in your mouth. And now I know—God—I know that it’s different with a man. With you. You’re not tentative, you’re not trying to be gentle. You just know. God, you just know. You just know me so well. Your mouth. Your mouth. I have to hold onto you somehow, grab at whatever I can. If I just let you go the intensity might kill me.

“Edge…”

You make a small, interrogative sound.

“So good, Edge.”

I swear I can feel you smile for a second. Then nothing but warmth, rhythm, unbearable sweetness. Your hair slipping through my fingers, sweeping across my thigh. And everything, everything in the whole world, comes rushing toward the hot, wet place where your mouth encircles my cock, pulling on me, taking me upward. I’m afraid I might escape gravity.

What do we look like? Me on my back with my mouth open, making strange sounds, trying to watch you, you, kneeling over me like an angel of mercy, or a merciless angel. My all-too human limbs tensed to the breaking point. My hands buried in your hair, and your mouth, your mouth covering me completely, taking all of me in.

Imagine if someone took a picture of us. Imagine if we made that picture the next album cover.

“God, Edge, my beauty, my love.”

You’re tireless, and everything you do is right. The pressure of your lips, your tongue. Your fingers slipping down to stroke me everywhere.

“Edge—” Too late to warn you. A final flick of your tongue and I’m gone, crying out like a seabird, lost in the waves, crashing, spilling up and over, into you.

You look up after a minute, a little astonished, I think, at what you’ve done. My heart is still thundering in my ears. Your pretty lips are swollen.

“Edge, I never. Anything. Like you. Come here to me. Come here. I want to hold you.”

You’re brutally hard against my stomach, poor baby. Hard the entire time. You bury your face in my hair and say my name again and again. It’s a simple thing now—not as good as what you deserve, but all I can do at the moment—to take your cock in my hand, to run my fingers over your ass, and to explore you just a bit in places I haven’t tried before.

“My Edge. Do you like this?”

“ _Oh_. Yes.”

“Good. You know I’ll do anything you want. Anything for you. Always, Edge.”

“Bono…”

You come so beautifully, all over me, arching your back, whispering _oh fuck, oh fuck_ , in a most un-angelic way. I could get addicted to watching you come.

“Jesus. You are…I don’t even know _what_ you are, The Edge.”

“‘S’okay,” you say between fast, hard breaths. “I don’t know either.” You roll over and burrow into my side.

“Edge. Fuck me next time.”

“Sorry?”

“You heard me.”

“Is that what you want?”

“Yes.”

“Well. All right then. I’ll put it on my to-do list.”

“I love it when you talk dirty, Edge.”

You rub your face into my shoulder, you laugh your shy little heartbreaking laugh. Then we spend quite a bit of time just lying side by side, watching each other’s faces. This is how I know it’s love. This is how love is at the beginning. That gentle, silent, wondering study of the other. You and I have been looking at each other for fifteen years, of course, but never quite like this.

“I’ve just realized, Edge, that it’s a very long way from the tip of your nose to your upper lip. If some miniature person were to try to jump the distance, I mean.”

“The philtrum.”

“The what?”

“That space between the nose and mouth. It’s called the philtrum.”

“You would know that.” I kiss your philtrum. “Also, your upper lip has a little extra sort-of dip to it.”

“I am a monkey-man, Bono. No, a caveman, right? Big forehead, long philtrum.”

“You are utterly beautiful. There is not a perfect enough piece of marble in all of Carrara from which to carve you. The sculptor would weep in frustration.”

“You have almost no philtrum at all.”

“Wow. Thanks. I’m telling you you’re beautiful, and you call me a philtrum-less freak.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth.”

“But you seem to like having things in your mouth.”

“Heyyy.” You give me a playful shove. “Just imagine Larry over there in the corner, doing a rimshot.”

“I’m sorry Edge, I can’t possibly imagine that at this time.”

“Yeah, best not to. But you know, your face is otherworldly. All these very prominent verticals and diagonals. Impish. But also, you always look a little bit like you’re sneering. Sexy as hell. This mouth.” You kiss me. “And your eyes. You fuckin’ heartbreaker.”

“And all of this without a philtrum.”

“A guy like you doesn’t need a philtrum.”

“Edge.”

“I love you, Bono.”

_Finally._

 

 

***

It’s late. You drive me back to the studio so I can collect my car, but before we part ways we take a walk by the river. All of my muscles are pleasantly exhausted, like they are after a long day of swimming. I don’t want to go home yet. How can I. The water is black, the lights of the city shine in its oily surface. I think we always have to be near the water, you and I. It’s a part of us.

“So,” you say quietly, “about Ali.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. She knows, Edge.”

“You told her?”

“She just knows. She just knew.”

“Oh.” You clear your throat. “And?”

“She seems weirdly calm about it. I guess I’ll know more soon enough.”

You nod. Watch me strike a match, light up a cigarette. You say, “Adam knows.”

“I thought so.” I suck in the smoke. I really should quit before I wreck my voice. “You told him?”

“He just knew.”

“Christ, these people. All geniuses. Did he tell Larry?”

“No, but Larry will figure it out at some point too.” You bump against my side, gently. “Does it matter?”

“It might.”

“It won’t.”

“If the information gets beyond ‘the family,’ it might.”

“Maybe. I suppose. But hey, it’s the nineties! Everybody’s cool with it now! Don’t you watch the news?”

“Haha, of course! O brave new world. Well, everybody’s cool with lesbians, anyway. People still look at gay men and think: AIDS.”

“True.” You give a tired little sigh, but the darkness and the street lights are doing outrageously beautiful things to your face. I drop my cigarette and grind it out with my heel. There’s no one around. I rest my head on your shoulder, and you lean in.

“We need to get this record made, Edge. And it needs to be a little outrageous. If we approach it from left field somehow, I mean, if we just do something a little bit flamboyant—we could be like martial arts experts, using our opponents’ own force against them to knock them down.”

“Wow, Bono.”

“But you know what I’m saying, The Edge, don’t you? You understand me.”

You take my hand and bring it to your lips. “Yes,” you say. “I’m afraid I do.”


End file.
